Troubled Portland beach with one of the best city views gets makeover. Will it work?

A Portland nonprofit that advocates for river access is seeking to reclaim a gritty eastside beach for the public in an area plagued by homeless encampments, occasional violent crime and a consistent debris field of trash.

The Human Access Project, which has worked for more than a decade to make several points on the Willamette River accessible for recreation, is now focused on “reactivating” Audrey McCall Beach, a stretch between the Hawthorne Bridge and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

The beach features one of the most beautiful views of downtown Portland and its bridges and is listed by the city as one of six swimming spots on the river and by the state as a recreation site.

But it also has attracted unsanctioned campers, garbage, needles, human waste and derelict boats that have made reclaiming the space more difficult.

The nonprofit is renewing its effort at Aubrey McCall after landing a $250,000 grant from the Metro regional government to improve the beach, nearby dock at the Portland fire station just north of the bridge and the surrounding area. It also has launched weekly events to entice Portlanders to swim and enjoy the sunsets at the troubled site.

“Our work is cultural change,” said Willie Levenson, executive director of the Human Access Project. The group is driven by the saying of famed oceanographer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau, he said: “‘People only protect what they love.”

Human Access Project volunteers have done a dozen cleanups this year at Audrey McCall – named after the wife of Gov. Tom McCall who loved swimming – and are doing weekly cleanups this summer, Levenson said. The group regularly reports any new encampments to the city, he said.

Next up: Improving the connection to the beach from the esplanade and building out the area under the Hawthorne Bridge owned by Multnomah County, Levenson said.

Also in the works: Adding murals under the bridge, removing invasive blackberries and planting native plants, he said.

The nonprofit is working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to convert parking on Southeast Madison Street to angle parking, he added, which would significantly increase the number of parking spaces available.

“There currently is not anyone camping (there). Homeless campers have been moved on pretty quick by the city when we report it,” he said earlier this week.

The beach has been a focus for the Human Access Project since 2012.

Between 2012 and 2016, the group worked to remove more than 200 tons of concrete from the site, also known as Eastbank Crescent Beach.

The effort was stymied by bureaucratic red tape, Levenson said: It had to be approved by eight different city, county and state agencies because the site is owned and managed by the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Department of State Lands, Prosper Portland, the city of Portland and several others.

Because the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality didn’t allow Human Access Project to use mechanized equipment to clean the site, Levenson said he partnered with Multnomah County’s Inverness Jail to bring work crews to help the group’s volunteers load up the concrete debris onto an ATV.

It’s why it took four years to originally restore the beach, he said.

The Human Access Project then raised money to bring lifeguards to the site and started promoting the beach for swimming in 2019, establishing that it could be used for recreation – despite the city’s claim that it should be converted to wildlife habitat only.

The COVID-19 pandemic ground the project to a halt with closures of public spaces and numerous homeless encampments blanketing the riverbank and the bluffs above it. The camps and pollution grew largely unchecked until 2022 when the city ramped up camp removals and hired a private waste company to clean up and remove tents in natural areas.

Several high-profile crimes also occurred nearby. In May 2022, a woman was shot in the back of the neck at the end of a drum circle on the pedestrian-bike path along the river near the Hawthorne Bridge. A jury convicted her killer last month. And in June 2022, a man punched a father and his 5-year-old daughter who were riding bikes near the same spot after making comments about their Japanese descent.

The area has struggled since the pandemic to shake its troubled reputation. Encampments have continued to crop up at the beach and bluffs, despite city contractors regularly removing them and conducting cleanups, according to a dashboard run by the city’s Impact Reduction Program that removes encampments citywide.

The cleanups entail crews collecting trash, personal property and biowaste associated with a specific campsite being removed, said Laura Rude, the program’s spokesperson.

Cleanup crews use rakes to more effectively remove and gather the trash, she said, but they don’t remove microtrash — the innumerable small pieces of trash embedded in the ground left behind by encampments – and don’t conduct full beach cleanups.

The last camp removal and cleanup was done in June at Audrey McCall, Rude said.

Firefighters at the local station near the Hawthorne also continue to respond to regular encampment-related calls on the beach, said firefighter and paramedic Jake Gartland who works at the station. This includes assaults and illegal fires that burn garbage and treated wood and aren’t contained per city requirements, Gartland said.

The Oregon Health Authority said it’s not aware of anyone regularly surveying Willamette River beaches for trash or hazardous waste and needles.

The agency’s Environmental Health Assessment Program last analyzed soil sampling at Audrey McCall in 2015 and found no chemicals harmful to humans, said spokesperson Jonathan Modie.

But even if issues were found, Modie said, state health officials don’t have power to close the beach because it’s on city-owned property.

The state agency also monitors algal blooms on the river and Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services regularly checks the water quality on the river for E. coli., though not at Audrey McCall.

The Human Access Project is holding events at the beach every Tuesday in July and August featuring lifeguards, DJs, food trucks, swimming and great views of downtown.

Those who venture out to swim in the river should have intermediate to advanced swimming skills, wear a brightly-colored swim cap and colored floating safety buoy and carry a whistle, according to suggestions posted by Parks & Recreation. Swimmers should not be alone and should stay close to shore, among other precautions.

—–

OTHER WILLAMETTE BEACHES

The Human Access Project launched in 2011 after the city completed the Big Pipe, resulting in a near-total elimination of combined sewer overflows into the Willamette. Since then, the group has made significant strides to rehabilitate recreation and swimming on the river.

That includes spearheading the opening of the city’s first recognized public beach in nearly 100 years, Poet’s Beach, in the shadow of the Marquam Bridge.

Other work by the group:

– Converting the Duckworth Dock – on the Eastbank Esplanade between the Steel and Burnside bridges – from a motorized dock to a non-motorized swimming dock.

– Removing concrete and replacing the dock at Cathedral Park Beach under the St. Johns Bridge.

– Removing riprap and developing trails at the Tom McCall Bowl – a strip of beach just south of the Hawthorne Bridge at the Waterfront Park.

– Adding ladders to the dock at the fire station by the Hawthorne Bridge and the dock at Sellwood Riverfront Park to make them accessible for swimming.

– Organizing the Big Float, an annual event that took place from 2011 to 2022, drawing tens of thousands of people to the river.

— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at [email protected] or 971-421-3154.